I just thought I'd share this little story my aunt told me a few years ago:

In 1930 France, my maternal grandparents had their first child, a girl. They called her Nicole. Being devout Catholics, they went to see their local priest shortly after her birth to arrange her baptism. The priest, however, totally refused to baptize her as Nicole because "that's not even a name!" He accepted to baptize her under her middle name (which was her godmother's name) of Marie-Thérèse. That only concerned the Church, though, and my aunt has always gone by her legal name of Nicole. I would never have thought of Nicole as being a trendy, novelty name that got people's eyes rolling, but it must have been back then.

My guess is that it wasn't so much the presence of Nicole but maybe the absence of a saint's name with it? I know of an elderly woman who was quite recently concerned to find out her great grandchild was getting a name completely devoid of a saint's name. It wasn't always expected to be the first name but it was usually somewhere in there back in the day. I have never heard of a priest nowadays urging it, at least around here , but I think some of the crowd who are old school still think that way.

My guess is that it wasn't so much the presence of Nicole but maybe the absence of a saint's name with it? I know of an elderly woman who was quite recently concerned to find out her great grandchild was getting a name completely devoid of a saint's name. It wasn't always expected to be the first name but it was usually somewhere in there back in the day. I have never heard of a priest nowadays urging it, at least around here , but I think some of the crowd who are old school still think that way.

My mother's name is legally Greta Marion, but she was baptized Margaret Mary because the priest insisted on saint's names.

I'm from Utah and I don't doubt that a single one of those names is real.

I have at least 6 cousins with names beginning with "Mc."

There was a big trend for awhile where people put "Le" or "La" at the beginning of otherwise common names. When I was in school, I knew: LeDawn, LeDale, and LaKaylyn.

This brings back memories...I went to college in Utah and knew a LaDawn and a LaRae. There was even a community theater play called "Happy Valley" (I think...it was a while ago) and one of the main charaters was LaVerl (that I do remember).

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